Half the world's submarines and at least half the combat aircraft will be in the Indo-Pacific region within the next 20 years.

The region will get long-range precision missiles, often ship-based. It will get more advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, including satellites, which will reduce the stealth abilities of Australia's hardware such as the heralded Joint Strike Fighter.

The region will get more drones. It will acquire new and futuristic weapons such as military quantum computing and directed-energy weapons. There will be more ballistic missiles.

The response in the white paper, explains the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Peter Jennings, who acted as an adviser, is an Australian navy whose weight will be "much, much further forward into the region than we had a generation ago".

The white paper is designed to build a defence of Australia "based in south-east Asia and the Pacific".Credit:Andrew Meares

Defence white paper.

Instead of a maritime strategy based out of Perth, Sydney and Darwin, we "have here … the design of a maritime strategy for the defence of Australia really based in south-east Asia and the Pacific".

We will, in other words, be right out there prosecuting our interests far from home.

Mr Jennings, a former Defence department official, says Australians need to "update our thinking" on what he calls China's "might makes right approach".

"When we started work on this white paper two years ago, there was no island construction. There were no missile deployments or air craft deployments.

Mr Jennings is a hawk on China. He strongly favours "freedom of navigation" operations close to China's disputed territorial claims.

But what he says underscores a reality that – however we plan to use it – we are building our navy in response to rapid change in our region.

That is the case whether we expect someday to use force, or hope that by having a strong military we will change other countries' behaviour so that we never have to flex our muscle.

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Either way, we aren't spending $195 billion on hardware for nothing. As Malcolm Turnbull himself said in his launch speech in relation to keeping Australia strong, "These are momentous times."